Forfeiture
by glasshibou
Summary: The story begins neither with a book nor a wish, but with a trade and a promise. An ocean away and decades before their births, the Williams children's fates are set in motion.
1. Cornwall, 1955

**Cornwall, 1955**

Her first child was born on a moonless night, when even the wind seemed to hold its breath-a portend of things to come. If it had been at all within her power, she would have held her babe tight within herself until the first fingers of dawn crept above the horizon. Jack was in the hospital again-ten years away from the second Great War and her husband was still feeling its effects. The same gas that ravaged his lungs in the Eastern Theatre still wrecked his health, and the excitement of an incoming newborn sent him over the edge. That left only her mother, Joan, and their impromptu midwife-a young neighbor hoping to one day become a nurse-to help her through the birth.

The girl was helpful. Her own mother-who clucked about ill omens and wrung her hands-was not.

Her mother was deeply superstitious and for the past two hours Meliora had been breathing and pushing and screaming, Joan had been listing off the ways the birth could go wrong. The first was that Meliora had forgotten to sweep the front doorstep that morning, an action sure to draw bad luck her way. The second was that it was the beginning of May, and that meant that "the fairies are about Meliora, and they look for those betwixt." Joan rattled on and on about the fairies until Meliora had to shout at her to stop. Imogene, already wracked with her own nerves, shot her a look of gratitude as she wiped the sweat out of Meliora's eyes. The baby, it seemed, was going to take its precious time. .

The third blow to Meliora's confidence in her own luck came when Joan looked out the window and saw that the moon was absent. Her own first child had been born on the dark of the moon and died before his first birthday. The reminder sent her mother into hysterics.

"If you keep up your wailing, I'll-" but whatever threat Meliora might have issued was cut off by a terrible shriek; the baby had decided at that moment to enter the world.

Imogene was quick to help, coaxing Meliora into a deeper breathing pattern. She watched and waited and when the baby crowned, reached out for her. From deep, deep within, Meliora felt like she was being pulled apart at the seams. She pushed one more time, and swore she heard something tear.

"Stop," Imogene whispered, so soft Meliora thought she'd imagined it. "Stop!" she said again, and in her inexperience and worry, she placed a palm against Meliora's bulging stomach and pushed. Already in agony, Meliora saw dark spots dance across her vision.

"The baby-the cord is wrapped around her chest," Imogene said, wiping her forehead with the back of her wrist and streaking gore across her skin in the process. "I'll have to… see if I can reach up inside."

The prospect sounded about as appealing to Imogene as it did to Meliora, and Meliora chose to ignore the girl's questioning tone. Her mother's insistence on mumbling about bad luck became even more aggravating, but even Meliora was starting to think she should have shooed away the magpie that rested on her windowsill that morning.

"Mama, water, please," Meliora whispered, her lips feeling like paper. She was losing her strength quickly, and wanted nothing more than for the birthing to be over-or better yet, to have never fallen pregnant in the first place.

 _No, don't say that_ , she chided herself. And when she thought _those betwixt should not think ill thoughts_ , it was in her mother's voice.

"She's struggling too much," Meliora heard Imogene say as if from far away. She blinked slowly, heard the soft breaking of an ampoule, then felt a sharp prick in her arm.

And with a shuddering sigh, Meliora slipped into unconsciousness.

* * *

Her first child was born on a moonless night, but Meliora was only there for part of it. When she woke, it was to a new baby girl sleeping in a trundle beside her bed. She felt too sore to ever move again, but Joan made her get up and walk around the room again and again. The only time she was allowed to truly rest was when a visitor knocked on the door, drawing her mother away.

The baby slept on, wrinkled and hairless, when Meliora first caught sight of her reflection.

 _I look positively ghoulish,_ she thought, sliding her fingers down her right cheek. Her eyes were bloodshot and she had red spots trailing from her face down to her chest, a testament to the pressure and pain she'd been under just hours before.

"Where's Jack?" she asked her mother, turning to face her somber expression. He got sick frequently-that was only to be expected-but had never had to spend more than a week in the hospital before. Not since being discharged.

Her mother looked away.

"Have you named the baby yet? It seems silly to keep calling her 'the baby'..." Joan leaned over the smooth the infant's nonexistent hair. Meliora frowned.

"Jack and I were going to narrow it down together, " she said. "Once he got out of the hospital. I guess we will have to wait until then."

Joan took care to avoid looking her daughter in the eyes, conspicuously staring down at the baby. Meliora did not overlook the way her mother's hand stilled, nor the way she swallowed.

"Mother… who was that? At the door just now?"

Joan licked her lips, glanced at Meliora, and then glanced away again.

"Nobody. The priest," she corrected herself after a pause. "He… wanted to see how you were holding up, considering."

Meliora quirked a brow at her mother, who looked to be attempting to fold in on herself. "Considering?"

"The birth was difficult," Joan said, her voice creeping into a whine. It only ever did that when she was verging on territory she didn't want to speak about with her daughter.

"Mother," Meliora said, narrowing her eyes. "Father Donahue didn't know anything about last night. Not unless you rang him, for whatever reason. now, why was he really here?" Despite not being a very good liar, Joan still tried it from time to time; it wore down her daughter's patience quickly. Joan looked away from Meliora. Meliora tapped her fingers against her vanity.

"I wanted to wait to tell you," Joan said, her voice a hollow husk of what it usually was. "With the baby coming, and then with the complications…"

Meliora sat down heavily and winced at the movement. Whatever her mother was about to say couldn't be good; she just hopes that whatever it was, Jack wouldn't be too angry. While Meliora didn't care herself, Joan wanted the infant baptized, an action which Jack was dead set against. Baptizing the baby in secret while Jack was in the hospital seemed like an action her mother just might entertain.

"He passed, honey. The pneumonia was bad. The doctor said that perhaps, if his lungs had been stronger…"

Meliora sat and listened, and although she knew that the words meant, she couldn't make any sense of them. She let them wash over her as she looked at her newborn daughter. The girl was small-and at a few weeks early, that was not that much of a surprise-but Meliora was struck by just how fragile she looked. It wouldn't take much to hurt her, Meliora realized with a shudder. And she already was; there remained an ugly bruise wrapped around her chest, disappearing under her armpits from the umbilical cord.

 _My fault_ , Meliora thought to herself. _I did that to my own baby…_ Her hands began to shake, and she reached out for her daughter, the last breathing reminder of Jack she had.

"Darling, are you listening to me? I said Jack is-" Her mother's words were gentle, but Meliora reacted to them as if she'd been slapped. Whatever spell she'd put over herself was broken, and she felt tears stinging her eyes.

"I heard you," she spat. "You lied to me. You let me think… my husband… Jack…" Meliora shuddered and tried not to think of her husband, lifeless in a hospital bed or morgue. He'd always hated hospitals and the clinical atmosphere that cloaked them. That's why they agreed upon a home birth, so their baby could be brought into the world in the same place she'd grow up. Home.

"I can begin funeral preparations," Joan said nervously. Meliora's eyes snapped back to her mother, as if she'd forgotten she was even there.

"Do whatever you think is necessary, just leave me alone."

And so Joan did.

They lived in the same house but did not speak to each other. The only time Meliora was aware of her mother's presence was when she came to get the baby-the baby who Meliora refused to name.

She couldn't.

Meliora loved her three-day-old daughter, but couldn't look at her tiny, wrinkled face without seeing Jack's death written on it. His passing was no fault of the babe's, of course; but thanks to her mother, Meliora couldn't separate them in her mind.

Logic had no place in the pain of her heart.

So she lived like an automaton: wake up, feed the baby, feed herself if she could bother, bathe the baby, change the baby, ignore the letters and phone calls from well-wishers, feed the baby more and, finally, sleep. Meliora passed her days in a haze of repetition, avoiding her mother and daughter as much as she could.

Sleep was her only refuge; in sleep, she sometimes saw her dear Jack again, could tell them of their daughter and how much she missed him. But Jack was always as silent as the grave he was being put to rest in, and the baby often woke her at odd hours. It wasn't unexpected, but a part of her resented her daughter's cries and wished for silence. That part of her wanted to never hear the baby whimper in her sleep or scream until she was red in the face again.

That part of her remembered that Jack was the one who truly desired children in the first place, and resentment for the unnamed child only grew. Meliora tried to ignore it. She tried not to loathe her baby, who did not deserve it.

But still, every time she was woken from sleep, and every time she desired even just an hour of quiet, she was forced to remember that she was doing it all alone. The man who was supposed to be with her through all of it was gone too early. Her mother had little patience for Meliora's unwashed hair or dark under-eye circles, and Meliora had little patience for Joan as a whole.

She grew accustomed to being exhausted, to waking with the baby in the early hours of the morning. Meliora was only ever half awake when feeding the baby, and often fell asleep midway through.

More than once she'd woken to find her shirt still open, the baby still in her arms. Her mother would have scolded her for that-Meliora had already been lectured once since the babe's birth that infant should sleep by themselves. Meliora's response was to shrug and privately retort that her mother should mind her own business. Joan would grow tired of scolding her eventually; it was only a matter of time.

She woke in the pre-dawn hours once again to find that the baby had fallen asleep in her arms, and that Meliora herself had drifted off sometime during the feeding. The babe's face was pressed up against her chest. Meliora had a hazy memory of half-waking to the infant's squeals and bundling her in her arms. She must have fallen back asleep right after that.

But something was wrong; her child did not nestle in closer after Meliora moved, nor did the air faintly whistle in and out of her tiny nostrils. She didn't seem to be breathing at all.

With trembling fingers, Meliora stroked her baby's cheek. It was cold. The child's skin was pale gray, even, and she would neither warm nor wake o matter how much Meliora begged. She held the corpse of her only child-of Jack's only child-tight to her chest and stood on shaking legs.

Half-remembered stories from her mother flitted through her memory while terror and desperation thrummed through the rest of her.

She thought back to her hanger the night of the birth, how she wished she'd never gotten pregnant.

 _My fault, my fault, my fault_ , she repeated to herself, slipping barefoot out the front door of her cottage. Meliora stumbled westward down the pathway and out the front gate, where she tore the edge of her nightgown on a stray splinter. Her baby, cradled in her arms, remained silent.

The night was not cold, but the wind tore at her lank hair and alerted her to the tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Get to the stones," she ordered, stumbling over her own words. She continued to order herself-continued to force herself to place one foot in front of the other-all through her mile long journey through the dark. Her legs almost gave out under her more than once, and she ached-burned-from the life she brought into the world just a few days prior. A life already gone.

The area was flat, mostly, and once she stepped off the main road of packed dirt, she had to find the trodden path to the stones, where travellers and tourists had worn down the earth. Her toes were going numb from the cold dew on the ground.

Meliora fell to her knees a few paces from the stones and crawled the rest of the way to the one she needed with one arm; the other was still holding her child to her.

She remembered the stories her mother would tell her about the Men an Toll, how people brought their influenza-stricken children to the Crick Stone for healing. How before the flu, babes with rickets might be cured by passing them through the stone.

Meliora thought the stories were fanciful at best, or dangerous at their worst, should parents rely on them instead of the modern sciences. Now they were her only hope.

She kneeled in front of the middle stone as if at mass, feeling the damp grass and well-worn dirt on her knees through her nightgown.

"Please, please, please," she croaked, her tears and snot making her throat raw. "My baby. Please, spirits, fair folk, whatever you may be. Please, save my baby."

She passed the empty body of her baby through the middle of the circular stone three times, as her mother's stories said to do. She begged the people of the mounds to help her. She prayed to whatever might be listening.

Nothing replied.

"Please-anybody. I'll do anything."

She placed her baby on the ground, as if offering it up as a sacrifice; she could no longer hold her daughter. Meliora kneeled over her failure and sobbed, pressing her forehead against the cool dirt in front of the stone.

The night went slowly silent. Insects stopped chirping; the wind fell in a decrescendo.

"What do you mean by offering me a corpse?" A voice asked, sounding disgusted. "There is no fair trade to be had here."

Meliora looked up, dirt and tears streaking her face. There stood a man wearing clothes that blended in with the night sky, a crown of stars around his head and while blonde hair. He looked down at her, hand on his hips.

"Who-who are you?" Meliora asked, leaning over her baby as if she could protect it from anything. The man did not look human-in fact, he certainly was not human. No human man had skin that shimmered faintly with starlight, no human man could appear out of thin air.

"The one you called upon, stupid girl. Did you not ask for help? Say you would do anything?" The man sneered down at her, and Meliora felt her heart sink. This was to be her savior?

"My baby," she said, having to mouth the words a few times before she could force them to come out. "My baby has died. I need her back."

"Those are strong magics you ask for, mortal. You would get a child. What would I get in return?"

Meliora tried frantically to think of what it was her mother said the mound people wanted, and came up only with silly things. Surely they wouldn't be enough to make this strange creature being her daughter back.

"Warm milk at a windowsill and honeycombs in the summer," she offered hopefully. "Fresh bread every Friday."

The man tipped back his head and laughed uproariously.

"Is that all your only child is worth to you? Is that all that the last memory of your husband is worth to you? I think not."

A chill swept down her spine; how could he possibly know those things? How dare he mock her with the death of the person she loved most in the world? Tears filled her eyes again, and she looked down at her baby. If all was lost… If she had no hope left… Then would it not be better to join the rest of her small family, wherever they were?

"Look, woman; I cannot bring back your child to you."

"Cannot?" She asked. "Or will not?" If he was not going to help, and with her future seeming so bleak, she saw no reason to check her temper.

"Will not," the man said with a feral smile and a not in her direction, his face lit up by his crown of light. "But what I can offer you is this. A trade. Look, and see your dreams fulfilled as best as you can hope for."

She looked up at him again from her position on the ground, and in his arms he held an infant. It seemed only to be a few days old, no bigger than her own daughter. Meliora choked back a sob and reached up to take the babe in her arms. The baby fussed against her hold, and Meliora smoothed the tiny shock of bright red hair down on her head.

"Mine?" She asked her voice filled with awe.

"A _trade_ ," the man clarified. "This child is of no use to me, but rest assured that she is perfectly healthy, in human terms. She will grow to be human, as you will be the only mother she knows. Do you accept?"

Meliora heard nothing but that she might keep the babe, and its tiny coos. She nodded. Her own blood child was beyond her reach but she needed only a second chance. Needed another opportunity to take care of a babe, to prove that she could be the mother Jack thought she could be.

"And in return, I will be given a child."

Meliora snapped all of her attention to the man, eyes wide with terror.

"But-"

"The child in your arms is yours. I will even do you the service of taking this one," he motioned towards the cold baby at her feet, "away. But years from now, you new daughter, or your daughter's daughter, will have to make a decision. I am owed a child. You have accepted the terms. So may it be."

He leaned down at took her dead baby in his arms, and in the light from his crown she looked almost alive again. But the babe in her arms squealed, pulling her attention away from the man and her blood daughter. When she glanced back in his direction, he was gone.

She was alone at the stones.

"Irene," she whispered, holding her baby close to her. "I will call you Irene."


	2. Cornwall, 1970

**Cornwall, 1970**

It wasn't every week that a girl turned fifteen, and Irene was determined to make her birthday a good one. Her mother was in one of her _moods_ again, but she would not let that trouble her too much. Her mother was frequently in a _mood_ , and nothing but bed rest seemed to help.

But her mother being abed was a good thing for today; it meant that she could sneak out of the house to see her grandmother, who gave her sweets and books of fairy stories, both of which were mostly forbidden in her own house.

"Your mother is all about the sciences," her grandmother clucked as she handed Irene a beribboned book with a red cover. _The Red Fairy Book_ was just the latest of Lang's collection of fairy books to be added to Irene's bookshelf; the tradition had been going on for seven years, ever since Irene had discovered that she could keep secrets from her mother. Her grandmother was happy to oblige.

"A dose of fantasy is good for a girl your age," Grandmother Joan said as she placed a strawberry tart in front of her only granddaughter. "If your mother keeps you ignorant, there's no telling what trouble you could get into with the Fair Folk." Mentions of the Folk were usually followed by a theatrical wink, but sometimes they weren't. On those occasions, Grandmother Joan became somber and severe. She claimed that the fairies had stolen away her infant son-who would have been Irene's uncle-and almost took Meliora the night Irene was born.

Irene didn't necessarily believe her grandmother-after all, she was a modern girl. She didn't think that fairies slept under rose bushes or would curdle your milk if displeased. But it was fun to make believe sometimes that magic existed, even if her mother hated such talk under her roof. Meliora hated anything, it seemed to Irene, that couldn't be quantified or measured, and had a special distaste for grandmother Joan's folklore. That was why visits were meant to be monitored closely, and Irene was under no circumstances supposed to sneak out to see her grandmother.

So that was exactly what she did, as often as possible.

Irene settled down into her grandmother's reading nook, a plate of fresh sugar cookies beside her. _The Red Fairy Book_ held some of her favorite fairy tales-she dreamed sometimes of dancing all night, like one of the twelve princesses, and wondered if she had her own fairy Carabosse cursing her first twenty years, too. Sometimes it felt like it.

She wasn't the only child in her class missing a parent, but no other could say that their father died before their birth. The others could properly mourn their deceased mother or father, reflect on precious memories of the time before. Irene had no such solution; how was she to mourn a man she'd never met?

And much like fairy tales, whenever Irene brought up the subject of her father, her mother became tight-lipped and short-tempered. It almost always led to one of her _moods_ , where Meliora would both push Irene away and seem to want to hold her close all the same. Waves of anxiety would roll off her mother, followed quickly by bouts of interchanging anger and grief.

It was, Grandmother Joan confessed once, most likely all due to the circumstances surrounding Irene's birth, though Grandmother Joan did take pains to assure Irene that it was not her fault-when she remembered to.

Which was why they shared fairy stories of every stripe, even though Irene did not believe in the way that her grandmother believed. Sometimes they'd talk about the stories in the books Joan gave to Irene. She'd been hoping to continue the tradition, but heard her grandmother answer the phone; it was Maude, no doubt, which means that her grandmother would be distracted for ages. Irene sighed, carefully marked her place in the book, and slipped it into the waistband of her skirt.

"I'm going home, grandmother!" She called out, even though it was a lie. She'd go home eventually, but was in no mind to go as soon as possible. Not on her birthday, and not when her mother was in a mood.

Instead, she fancied reading out by the stones. It was something of a tourist trap, but Irene knew the secret path through the farmland that strangers weren't meant to use. She hadn't befriended the farmer's son Thomas for that reason, but it was a nice addition to the friendship.

The air always felt heavy at the stones, like she was wrapped up tight in one of her mother's knitted wool blankets. It felt familiar in the way she always thought a home should feel. Comforting. the stones were cool and the grass was soft.

And at this time of the day, she should be the only one there for at least a few hours.

Yes, Irene decided. Reading fairy stores out by the stones was _exactly_ how she'd like to spend her birthday. And if Meliora or Joan asked about the discrepancy in her schedule, she could always say that she was with her friend and his mother. Meliora liked Thomas's mother, despite her living so close to the Men an Toll. She was a stable, sturdy woman, as any farmer's wife had to be, and she allowed no nonsense under her roof. And Thomas would always vouch for Irene anyway.

She wondered sometimes if Thomas was sweet on her, or if she was sweet on Thomas. He was a nice enough boy; honest, and kind, and even sometimes attractive if she looked at him in the right light. But he was a friend, and close to a brother, and she'd hate to have his father as her own father-in-law. Irene wasn't very experienced in how fathers should behave, but she doubted they should strike their sons over minor infractions.

And she knew that Thomas was not the only one with a father who was quick to anger. Sometimes, despite wishing very hard that her _own_ father might one day appear, she wondered if she was better off.

"You are late," the man said, and Irene had to blink at him a few times to make sure he was real. She'd been so absorbed in her thoughts of good fathers and bad fathers that she hadn't realized she'd made it all the way to the stones. And then she hadn't realized that there was a man sitting atop the circular one, the one she was hoping to sit in front of herself.

"You are not meant to climb the stones. They're… protected." She realized halfway through her statement that the man was very, very strange, and she probably ought not talk to strange men. His proportions were off, and his eyes glimmered in a way she'd never seen anybody's eyes ever glimmer before. Perhaps she might had found him attractive if he wasn't wearing the strangest clothing she'd ever seen. And perhaps she wouldn't be so alarmed at the way he hinted that he knew her if he would quit staring at her so hard.

"You," he said again, enunciating his words in a strange, clipped way, "are late."

"I…" But Irene could not think of a counter. "Just who are you?" Her book felt thin and flimsy; it wouldn't do as a makeshift weapon. And Thomas's farmhouse was too far away for her to run to in her skirt and though her tall boots were fashionable, she doubted they would be good to run in.

He leaned back on the stone, staring at her with narrowed eyes.

"I see your mother has been remiss in your lessons. I am your king, and you will treat me with respect."

"We do not have a king," Irene said, wondering if mad men were particularly fast and if she would try running despite her boots and skirt.

"The _humans_ do not have a king," he corrected, and Irene could see that he was losing patience. "And although you have been taken in by humans and raised as one of their own, you did not start out that way, Irene. Such a terribly mortal name, but that is your lot. Sit down. You have a lot to learn." He flicked his fingers at her.

Irene did not want to sit down. In fact, she wanted to be back in her grandmother's reading nook with her plate of cookies. She wanted to be at home, with her own mother. She wanted to be anywhere but in front of this clearly insane man who ordered her about with the air of the king he claimed to be.

And yet, that was what she found herself doing. As if knocked out from beneath her, her knees folded and she landed hard on her shins. At the same time, a taste like bitter, unripe peaches filled her mouth. It had a hard tang that she couldn't quite place, and she longed for a glass of water so she could rinse it out.

"This is an ancient, sacred place, long claimed by my kind. It was where your mother, fifteen years ago, tried to plead for the life of her dead child."

Irene pursed her lips together. "I didn't die," she protested. "I've been healthy all my life."

" _Quiet_ ," ordered the man. He snapped his fingers at her, and Irene found herself quite unable to speak, as if her lips had been glued together. He leaned forward as if to study her face, and in his wild hair Irene saw glimmering lights like tiny stars that had been previously hidden by sunlight and distance. _A crown_ , she thought, and a wave of panic overwhelmed her. The man wasn't just an ordinary insane man. No earthly creature could trap stars to wear on their brow.

"Meliora crawled to me on her knees, begging for something I would not give her. Her child, flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone, was gone. Instead, she was offered a trade: a child for a child."

Irene felt her pulse quicken even faster.

"I gave her you, you stupid girl. Born in my lands but without magic, you were worthless as one of my kind. But you will serve a purpose in the end; you will bring me a child. That was the trade. You will offer up to me a child of your own one day, and the trade will be completed."

She wanted to scream at him, to tell him that _she_ was her mother's child, not some long-dead babe. She wanted to tell him that she'd never give him what she wanted. Irene tried to pry her lips open but was unable to. Even when she tried hooking an index finger in her mouth, she was unable to budge them.

She settled on shaking her head instead, and glaring up at the man with what she hoped looked like defiance and not the terror she truly felt buzzing below her skin.

"It seems that you were unaware of this trade, changeling Irene, so I will grant you this generous boon: I will give you fifteen more years in which to complete the trade. At that time, I will come to collect what is mine. Do you understand?"

Irene's lower lip trembled. She wasn't sure if she should nod or shake her head.

"If you do not have a child to offer, I will not be so generous again." He reached out, and Irene felt sharp nails scratch across her exposed throat, sending a panicked shudder through her body that ended in warmth blossoming across the seat of her skirt. "Now run along home. I tire of being here in this sunlight and poisoned air."

Having been straining against her invisible bonds for the entire one-sided conversation, Irene felt the moment they were released. She pitched forward, burying her face in the grass she had once thought so soft and comforting. No longer. Now she knew it was _his_ domain.

She stood, trembling and numb, and found her way home.

* * *

Irene stumbled home, neck throbbing, the first few layers of delicate, pale skin torn open and bleeding onto the collar of her shirt. Meliora asked what happened and Irene almost- _almost_ -told her mother what she experienced out at the stones. Instead, she put off her mother's questions with a lie about falling into bramble, and went about trying to put herself back together for the rest of the evening.

The scratches along her throat she dressed in bandages, hoping they would heal by the time she had to go back to school. Her skirt she laundered carefully, praying that all of the assorted new stains would come out. She could do nothing for the puffiness of her eyes from tears.

Her mother would protect her, of that Irene had no doubt. Or at least, she would try. For all that Irene thought things would change, they stayed stubbornly the same. Meliora was still delicate emotionally, almost crumbling under Irene's prodding questions. She was adamant that Irene was her only child.

And Irene had no doubt that her mother loved her. Irene loved Meliora in turn, and felt that she understood her mother's unspoken fears a lot better.

But when school began again on Monday, Irene went home that evening with information on transferring schools and a heavy request for her mother.

She wanted to go and live in America, to meet her father's parents, and she would like to complete her education there. Those were the reasons she gave her mother, and while she liked the idea of finally meeting her paternal grandparents, she was far more interested in putting and ocean between herself and the unearthly man.

After months of debate, Meliora relented.


	3. New York State, 1980s

New York State, 1980s

She never meant to fall in love. She had her whole life planned out-go to university, get a good job, maybe adopt a cat or two. Romance and children were both out of her reach, not allowed, not in the plan. Forbidden. She knew it that day at the Toll, and she knew it when she held her acceptance letter to her all-girls university in her hands.

Irene would take no chances. It wasn't her the fey man wanted, after all.

She didn't want to fall in love, but that didn't meant that she never felt its pull. And oh, she did; her roommate's brother would visit occasionally and she felt she might drown in his deep eyes. Then there was the young man at the stationery store she frequented, and he had a poet's soul, a lyrical way with words that turned her head and heart. Not to be forgotten-or outdone-was the coat check boy at the local dance hall that stayed in business, somehow, as if to spite the changing times.

From the edges of her vision she might watch them. Might steal a second or two in a fantasy world. She never learned any of their names, lest she lead herself into temptation. Never bothered to know them. Made herself content with stolen glances and aborted dreams.

Sometimes she wondered if her girlish crushes and envious desires were manufactured, planted within her mind by the whispers of a man an ocean away to secure for himself a child sacrifice. It was then that cold paranoia would sink its sharp claws into her heart. Careful planning and subtle manipulation drove those interested men away, and more than once Irene wondered if she should submit herself to the cloth, despite her own lack of strong faith. Nobody would fault a novitiate Sister for being cold to men.

Would they?

But a life of asceticism was more than Irene thought she could withstand, and it was better to be alone within the general masses than to be a cloistered changeling suffering aflse sisterhood.

Wasn't it?  
Irene threw herself into losing her accent with a ferocity matched only by her relentless studying. If she was going to make her future career her life, she reasoned, then she was going to be damn good at it. She was going to be Irene the successful businesswoman. Irene the terrified child, wet from her fear, could be interred within the dark halls of ignored memory. But not forgotten. Never forgotten.

Her first job out of college (not university; not in America) was as an editor in a tiny, brand-new publishing house where she mostly toiled through terrible manuscripts and gaudy children's magazines.

The publishing house grew. She became senior editor. When the house's chief of operations retired, Irene was asked to take his place. She accepted, even though she knew little about the position.

And despite her initial misgivings, Irene thrived. Under her careful management the publishing house grew, and captured a portion of the Northeast market. Irene was even mostly happy, even as she fielded wedding invitation from old college friends. She was happy for them, really. That still didn't quench her envy.

But the publishing house grew again with the acquisition of two new authors and a magazine; Irene was asked to find a lawyer to keep on retainer. Just in case, she was assured. So she did.

It was a breezy April afternoon when he walked into her office. His slight-too-big suit made him look younger than she thought he really was, like a child playing dress up in his father's closet. Despite that initial impression, however, he seemed competent enough and his rates, as a junior as his firm, were good.

And when he asked her out for a coffee date, she surprised even herself when she said yes. Robert was a efw years older than her, she discovered, but did not act like it. He was brilliant but absent-minded, the type to forget his pager on top of his car until he remembered it halfway to work. More than one piece of technology had met its grisly death under the wheels of his fellow motorists.

They settled into each other comfortably, and before Irene even know it, she had grown complacent with him. The week he was gone to settle his daughter's custody dispute gnawed at her. She realized, too late, two things.

The first was that it was time-well beyond it, in fact-to end the relationship. The second was that she couldn't. She'd allowed Roberd to wind himself too tightly into her life, to the point where leaving him would have felt like losing a limb. And so, she stayed.

Sarah was a quiet girl, living internally like her father but with a flair for the dramatic like her mother. She stared up at Irene with big, green eyes, but the girl's thoughts were clouded.

Did she know her mother didn't really want her? Used her as a bargaining chip, leverage against her father? Of course, Irene would never ask. But the way the girl looked at photos of her mother, stolen from newspapers or magazines she thought he father didn't know about said enough.

Irene started hunting them down for the girl, calling in petty favors from friends at tabloud rags or editorial rooms all across the country. She'd slip them into Sarah's things, hoping to keep up the girl's charade of apathy. Sarah never said anything about them, and Irene was content to keep the secret, too.

Irene kept her biggest haul for when the inevitable happened. Robert broke the news to Sarah that Irene would be moving in-and then in a few months, he would marry her. Irene was waiting to present a carefully curated pile of photos and articles an hour later, when she hoped the girl's temper had subsided.

"You're not my mother," the twelve year old said, inflecting her voice with more steel than Irene thought possible for her age. But she took the papers all the same, cautiously, as if waiting for Irene to slam shut the trap she'd laid for her.

"I know," was all that the soon-to-be stepmother said.

Sarah didn't speak to her for another three days, which suited Irene just fine; she was too busy figuring out if a stepdaughter counted as a child of her own, or if Sarah was safe from the strange man and his crown of violent stars. It wasn't as if there was anybody to ask. Her mother shut down if Irene so much as mentioned the Stones, and her grandmother was dead. Both would remain forever mum on the topic. And it wasn't as if she could summon the man to ask, even if she wanted to.

She did not want to.

Not even to save Sarah.

For as much as she wanted to pretend that she was Irene, the confident, successful business woman, she was still very much Irene, the terrified child. The memory left a taste like bitter peaches in her mouth. She did not hate Sarah-didn't even dislike the girl-but still found herself coming up with reasons her sacrifice could be acceptable, should she be taken. The girl's own mother wanted nothing to do with her-or, more accurately, nothing to do with being a mother. Robert sometimes seemed to forget that he had a daughter. The rest of the time, he pretended to be baffled by the girl. And she spent so much time alone…

Would it really be a loss?

Yes. Irene knew it would be, even as she tries not to. But still, she had to find a way to justify it all, to take a sting from the girl's probable sacrifice. So she started to plan, the same way she'd tried to plan out her whole life all those years ago. This time, Irene vowed, she would not fail. If she could get the girl to walk calmly into her own cage, to accept her condition before she ever even knew the stakes, was it really still so bad?

Yes.

Irene soldiered on, and spent the next eight months putting a book together, scripting the story she needed Sarah to believe. There was danger, and hardships, and adventure for the heroine. Romance, too; just enough to inspire girlish curiosity. And when it was all done, irene begged one final favor from a friend to get the poisonous tale printed and bound in red. There was no identifying information hidden within the font cover. There would never be another like it in the world.

It was to be Sarah's, a seed to be planted in her mind that Irene hoped would bear fruit. So Irene waited and kept it inside her bedside drawers; the right moment would come. The trap would spring shut.

The right moment happened to be three hours before Irene was to take her vows with Sarah's father. She bent down, half dressed in her wedding vestments, and offered the book to Sarah. The girl, looking surly and all of her puerile thirteen years, glanced up at her.

"I know this might be boring for you," she said with an air of matronly understanding, "but I saw this and thought you might like it. The heroine reminded me of you."

Irene paused, wondering if she should dare to be so brazen.

But Sarah did not notice, only took the slim volume while trying-and failing-to hide her curiosity. The seed was planted.

That day-her wedding day, which she thought would never, could never come to pass-she felt each of her twenty-eight years weighing on her. She felt, rather than knew, that her time was running out. If the man could reach across the ocean to collect his debts, he would do it soon. This thought she held forefront in her mind, even as she pledged her life to her husband and he to her. She should have been happy. Overjoyed. Instead she was tinged with terror and cold, sickly dreak.

Remember what you owe.

She found the message at the very back of the guest book in harsh, jarring script. The terror of that day-both days, all days, all the days of her life in which she had to remember him-washed over her again.

Irene tore the page out and burned it over her stovetop, watching it curl into ash and settle on her kitchen floor. She was Mrs. Williams, now. She could handle it.  
That afternoon, she started making Sarah a gown that matched the of the book's heroine. Sarah was taken with it immediately, and took to reciting lines from the book while costumed. In any other context, it would have been amusing, something to videotape for posterity. Instead, Irene felt like Sarah was reading her own epitaph.

Robert took little note of his daughter's new hobby, and Irene took care to promote it in ways that would not seem to obvious. It was a delicate balancing act, the careful pushing and pulling of Sarah's interests, laced with Irene's own guilt. To the outside world, Irene acted the long-suffering stepmother, exasperated with her stepdaughter's thespian interests. Internally, she was anxious and perversely hopeful that Sarah might doom herself to that Irene could wash her hands of the situation.

But it was not quite that easy, and soon, Irene found that she was pregnant. Dread, instead of joy, came home to roost in her heart. She'd tried to avoid it. Even considered going to the doctor in her very early stages.

Robert found the pregnancy tests-seven, just to be sure-and was ecstatic. A baby! He said, beaming. Sarah would make an excellent big sister.

Irene had her private doubts.

The girl now had her fate sealed for her, and Irene had gone from being afraid that a stepdaughter might count to fervently hoping that was the case. She knew it made her monstrous, but with every week she progressed, the closer she wasted to hold her babe to her and never let go.

She began to show.

Sarah accused her father of trying to replace her, and her idolization of her mother only heightened. Irene, subsumed by guilt and hormones, took to crying when she thought she was alone. Sarah was right, in a way. One of Robert's children was going to be replaced, only Sarah was the one doing the replacing. She would take her baby brother's place as sacrifice, and the baby-Tobias, Toby for a nickname-would be safe.

It wouldn't be long. Every so often, Irene tasted the same bitter, phantom peaches from all those years ago and knew that some sort of magic was being worked. She distanced herself from Sarah after Toby was born, becoming sharp-tongued and impatient, which she blamed on her postpartum state. Sarah withdrew further into herself, away from her stepmother and the father she assumed no longer cared for her. It broke Irene's heart, even as she let it happen. Irene started collecting toys for Sarah that were reminiscent of the story she'd written for her stepdaughter. A labyrinth board game. A princess doll. Stuffed mythological creatures, like unicorn and dragons. Even a beautiful edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

She watched as Sarah wandered deeper and deeper into the storybook labyrinth, only there would be no Adriane to lead her out. Irene let the days wash over her, throwing herself back into work after her leave ran out so that she might be able to ignore the doomed girl living in her home.

Toby would be safe.

Her life as she now knew it would be safe.

That was all that mattered.


	4. New York State, 1985

"She treats me like the wicked stepmother in a fairy story, no matter what I say," Irene pouted at her husband. He shrugged, not wanting to step between the two most important women in his life-or at least, that was what he always claimed.

"I'll talk to her," Robert said, as if to soothe Irene.

But Irene wasn't upset. She planned for this. The book, the handmade dresses, the nitpicking and fussiness she knew the teenaged girl hated-all carefully manufactured to prey on her angst. And the poor thing was performing beautifully. Irene had no doubt that when the time came, Sarah would be only too happy to wish herself away to the Goblin King from her story book.

Sometimes Irene even let herself believe that the story she had written had a grain of truth to it-that the Goblin King really did somehow fall in love with the girl… Or at least, that nothing awful would happen to her.

Because while Irene was willing, now, to sacrifice her stepdaughter, she really didn't hate her. But there was no contest when it came down to choosing between Sarah or Toby.

Robert came back downstairs and she followed him out into the car. Irene glanced back at the house once, a strange feeling brushing against her senses. Sarah's bedroom light was still on. No matter-Toby was asleep and would likely stay that way until they got back home. Sarah could pout all she wanted.

A bolt of lightning seared the sky.

"Looks like more rain," Robert remarked. Irene only nodded, her lips pressed tightly together, her mouth filled with the taste of bitter peaches. She told herself that she was imagining it, but couldn't taste dinner through the unripe fruit.

The careful steps of the ballerinas in _Swan Lake_ were also not enough to distract her. Irene worried that the man had come and taken her Toby-a child for a child, as he'd promised all those years ago. She shied away from Robert's suggestion of cocktails at a lounge, citing exhaustion from the long day.

It was but a few minutes past midnight when she finally make it home. The first floor was flooded with light, like Sarah hadn't bothered to turn off any of them. The upstairs, too; Irene barely took note of it as she raced to her room, to her baby.

The taste of peaches, commingling with the sharp, heavy scent of hot metal filled her mouth and nose. Irene gagged.

Her hands trembled.

There was something in the crib.

 _Toby_.

She leaned forward and held him in her arms, pressing him to her skin. Woken from his sleep, her squirmed, whimpering. Irene kissed the top of his head, feeling his wispy hair against her lips, tasting dirt and dust on his scalp. Irene shuddered, wondering-and dreading the answer of-where he might have gotten so dirty. But he was safe, which was more than she thought she could hope for. She licked the pad of her thumb and wiped away a smear of dirt from his forehead.

When Irene exited the room she shared with Robert, she was not surprised to see Sarah. The girl stood with her back against her bedroom door, palms flat against the paneled wood, head tilted slightly downward, only half listening to her father putter around in the kitchen. Her eyes were wide, but unseeing; she stared into the middle distance.

"I trust it was a quiet night?"

Sarah's reaction was telling. She snapped her head up and looked right at Irene, the ghost of some inscrutable emotion flitting across her face.

"Yeah-yes. He slept. I played. In my room," she finished, a challenging look in her eyes. _Accuse me of lying_ , it seemed to say. _Just try it_.

Guilt. It was guilt that tinged the girl's face and seeped into her words, and in that moment, Irene wanted to slap her. She'd never wanted to hurt a child before; certainly, not as much as she wanted to now. But something had happened, something that reeked of magic and the strange man at the stones, and Sarah was at the epicenter of it all.

Irene pressed her lips together and fixed Sarah with a critical eye, wondering if she should accuse her of some other transgression-having a boy over, or rowdy friends, maybe. Something-anything!-to help vent the frustration and fear threatening to overtake her.

But Irene did not do that. Instead, she snorted out a short "hm," and watched as Sarah visibly relaxed. Robert came back up the stairs then, a glass of tap water in his hand, and if he noticed the daggers his wife was glaring at his daughter, he did not mention them.

"Goodnight, Sarah," he said, and Irene let herself he drawn back into their room. Where Toby was safe and sleeping soundly.

She counted her lucky stars that her son was still there, not stolen away in a burst of bitter, unripe magic like a fell wind. Sarah, on the other hand… it was time for her to go. Far from treating the story Irene wrote for her as a vaguely romantic promise, Sarah used it as an instruction manual and almost gave Toby up to the fate Irene had been struggling against for so long. It was clear that something needed to happen; it was even clearer that Sarah needed to be sent away. Quickly.

It was with this in mind that Irene watched how protective Sarah was over Toby in the intervening weeks. If the wind blew too hard, if a branch tapped against a window-anything unexpected, really-Sarah's attention immediately snapped to her baby brother.

The teenager's heightened vigilance did nothing to change Irene's mind; instead, it only made her more certain. Something had happened that night. Something bad. But Irene could not move immediately, not when Robert was still there, and not when she still had time left.

She would not be goaded into a rash action.

Sarah, over the course of another few weeks, relaxed.

Irene waited.

And then, as if orchestrated by forces outside of her realm of understanding, things arranged themselves. Robert was required to attend a business trip that just so happened to take place over her birthday. Irene acted upset about the situation, but was secretly giddy; that was one less thing to take care of.

On her way home from work one afternoon, Irene purchased a bottle of champagne.

That would take care of another.

Irene should have known that the contrary girl would not select the right thing from the story to take at face value. It couldn't have been that the king was in love with the girl-oh no, that would have been too easy. No, Sarah, Irene had a horrible suspicion, had actually wished away her baby brother as the novel's heroine had. And for that alone, Irene could never forgive her.

It was only with the faintest hint of guilt-a residual emotion-that Irene uncorked the champagne bottle and poured some of it into the two waiting flutes. It bubbled and fizzed, and into Sarah's glass, Irene poured much more. Against her own, the pressed her bottom lip so that the lipstick stain left behind would indicate that she'd already had some.

"Sarah," Irene said, tapping against the girl's bedroom door with the hand that held her own half-full glass. "I have something for you. Why don't you come out?"

There was a shuffling noise and a soft murmur- _who on earth could she be talking to?_ Irene wondered-before Sarah opened the door. When she saw the champagne flutes in her stepmother's hands, her eyes widened slightly. They widened even more in confusion when Irene pressed the fuller of the two into Sarah's hands.

"Toby is asleep," Irene said, forcing a wide smile onto her face. "And your father isn't here. Come and celebrate my birthday with me. We'll have some girl time."

"Well…" Sarah paused and half glanced back at her closed bedroom door. "I don't-"

"Oh, it'll be fun," Irene interrupted. "Come one." And with that, she spun on her heel and went back downstairs. After a beat or two, Sarah's timid footsteps followed her.

"You're a very mature young lady, you know," Irene told her stepdaughter once they were both in the living room. Sarah sat perched on the edge of her father's wingback leather chair, the one that was usually off limits to everyone else. She held the champagne glass in both of her hands at a distance form herself, as if it were a bomb she wasn't quite sure what to do with.

At Irene's words, Sarah raised an eyebrow, a signal to Irene that she was laying it on a little too thickly.

"Or, you will be very soon, at any rate," she amended. Irene assumed a kidnapping by preternatural creatures would tend to make a girl grow up a little too quickly. Guilt washed over her, and she stared into her own champagne glass. Bubbled clung to the sides.

 _Think about how she endangered Toby_ , she reminded herself. _Think about what will happen if she is not sacrificed_.

Irene put the glass to her lips and took the smallest of sips; the champagne bit at her tongue. It did not help her think any clearer, but it did give her something else to focus on for the briefest of moments. Following Irene's lead, Sarah took a too-long gulp of her own drink and immediately pulled a face in disgust.

"It's an acquired taste," Irene commented drily, motionting for Sarah to try it again. "I didn't enjoy my first time drinking it either."

"To growing up, I suppose," Sarah said with a sigh, bringing the thin rim of her glass once again to her lips. This time the mouthful of alcohol passed easier, though she didn't actually seem to like it any better.

Irene offered her an encouraging smile, one that felt too tight on her face. Any minute now-but hopefully only after Sarah had been dulled by the drink-the man would show up to claim her, and Irene could finally wash her hands of the unpleasant business. But still, she would have to rely on his wicked sense of timing. He had given her no way of calling-not even a name-not that she thought she'd ever desire to do so.

It gave her pause.

What if he came and took Toby, claiming that Irene had not called him in time and he was free to take whichever of the children he chose? An icy shudder trailed down her spine.

"Um, happy birthday, Irene," Sarah said, breaking the uncomfortably long silence that had grown between them. Her glass was empty-she'd always been a fidgety girl.

"Thank you, Irene said, refilling Sarah's glass. "I've been thinking a lot, Sarah, of when I was your age. I used to live beside farmland and forests-of course, if you weren't in a city, that's really all there was-with green stretching as far as you could imagine. I used to be a lot like you, you know."

The taste of bitter peaches coated her tongue, drowning out the champagne.

Sarah laughed-a quick, staccato thing-before taking another long drink to hide her embarrassment.

"I know," Irene inclined her head. "It is funny, in its own way." She sneezed, once, the magic thick in the air irritating her sinuses. Irene wondered how Sarah didn't sense it.

"When I was young, I even lived by these stones that everyone said held magical healing properties, blessed by the fairies. That wasn't quite true, of course."

Irene sneezed again.

"Would you like a tissue?" Sarah asked, not hiding her desire for escape well.

"No, I-"

Behind her, the grandfather clock boomed, heralding a new hour. Sarah stood. Her glass slipped from her fingers and shattered on the floor.

Irene sighed deeply.

"It is time," he said, and Irene sagged into her seat.

"I know," she said.

"Irene! Get away from him! Get away from her-don't you touch her!"

From the corner of her eye, Irene saw the man step forward and peer at her stepdaughter.

"Good evening, Sarah. Do be civil, would you?"

Irene watched as Sarah's face went pale and then red with anger.

"You can't have Toby."

Four words.

Those four simple words told Irene everything that she needed to know about that night and more. Sarah knew who the man was. He knew who Sarah was. And most importantly, Toby was involved in some terrible way.

Irene stood then, fury arcing through her muscles.

"It's her. She is the child you can take." She pointed to Sarah, her manicured nail glinting in the light like a claw.

The man smiled in a way that spoke of no joy, and Sarah burst into tears.

"Please no, please don't, Irene, I'm so sorry, I didn't really mean it. Please, please, I'm sorry, please, I know I wished him away, but I got him back and-"

Sarah fell silent.

Jareth pointed at the girl and flicked his wrist. Her panicked shouts were replaced with muffled moans, and Irene watched, impassive, almost outside of herself, as Sarah's lips sealed themselves shut.

"Those betwixt should not speak," the man said calmly. Sarah fell to her knees, the scream from her throat caught behind her lips as she clawed at her jaws in a futile attempt to part them.

Irene turned to face the man completely, and found that she could not bring herself to look him in the eyes. Perhaps Sarah deserved that much, at least-for the person giving her away to actually look at the one doing the taking. Irene settled for looking at his shoulders, which were clothed in what looked like feathers and the bones of small animals.

"She is not of your blood," the man noted.

Irene, much like Sarah who was still struggling on the floor, could not get her words to work properly. She settled on shaking her head.

"But you have fed her, clothed her," he paused, glancing slyly from Sarah to Irene, " _loved_ her. She is your daughter."

"Yes," Irene managed to say, her voice brittle. She grabbed her upper arms with her opposing hands-a facsimile of an embrace-and only then realized she was trembling. She looked down. Saw Sarah grasping at the shattered flute's stem.

And watched, as the world seemed to slow to a crawl, as Sarah launched herself at the man with the jagged shard of glass. Irene almost felt her heart stop- _you stupid stupid girl you'll jeopardize everything_ -and she gasped.

He caught her and twirled her around, a macabre parody of a ballroom dance, and forced her fist open and her wrist back until the glass fell harmlessly to the floor. Sarah tried to pull away but was caught tightly. Irene watched, her lips quaking, as she raised a hand-but to do what? She could not stop him any more than Sarah could.

He held the girl close to himself, even as she struggled. He lowered his mouth to Sarah's ears and stroked her hair with his other hand and Irene, just barely, heard him whisper.

"Where is your will as strong, Sarah? Your power that bested mine?"

Sarah thrashed in his grip, but he only clamped down harder. Irene felt hot tears burning behind her eyes.

"Is your deal done? Take her. Leave me and my son in peace." She did not want to see Sarah's terror any longer, wanted no part in witnessing this monster take his sacrificial lamb. Couldn't stand the tugging on her heart strings. Irene closed her eyes.

"The compact is finished," he said. "Come now, Sarah, and mind your manners."

Irene was alone in the room, she could feel it; the taste of unripe fruit vanished with the man and her stepdaughter. It was done.

In the silence, something broke.

Like her mother before her, she fell to her knees and wailed for the loss of a child.

Upstairs, Toby began to cry.

* * *

 **A/N**

Special thanks to tooralooryeaye, without whom this would not have come to be.


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